[
Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor Clarinet Quintet
(35:39);
Harold
Wright, clarinet; Virginia Eskin, piano; Michael Ludwig, violin;
Hawthorne String Quartet; Koch 3 7056 2H1 (1992)
]
The
English historian Jeffrey Green is author of
Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life
,
published by Pickering & Chatto Publishers (2011). He is also a
Guest Blogger at AfriClassical. This is his fourth contribution.
Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor and Booker T. Washington
by
Jeffrey
Green
Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor was the most famous black person in Britain in the
first ten years of the twentieth century – he was replaced by
Texas-born world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in 1911.
Likewise, in the United States of America the most famous black
person in this period was educator Booker T. Washington.
The
British composer’s Twenty-four
Negro Melodies, transcribed for pianoforte solo
were published in 1905, and had a preface by the American. As
Coleridge-Taylor had made his first visit to America in 1904, it is
easy to believe that it was at that time that the two men discussed
Negro Spirituals – which are the basis for sixteen of those
twenty-four melodies. I have seen websites that suggest this.
A
series of checks shows that belief to be false.
The
preface was written at Tuskegee, Alabama and is dated October 24,
1904. You can see the entire article on the Booker T. Washington
Papers site of the University of Illinois Press (this site is a
delight to use, but it will soon be subscription only).[1]
Coleridge-Taylor sailed from Liverpool on the Saxonia,
bound for Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 October 1904.[2]
The two men had not met at that time.
Washington
said that in his response, of 10 June 1904, to Coleridge-Taylor’s
letter of 21 May 1904 which had asked for advice and support during
the composer’s visit.[3]
He told the Briton “I admire greatly the work which you have done”
and advised “Your name is quite familiar among the intelligent
colored people of this county, but I very much fear you are not known
very much except exclusively musical circles among the white people,
in the latter respect you will have to advertise yourself”.
The
publisher of Twenty-four
Negro Melodies
was Oliver Ditson, and it seems that their files do not exist. So
when was this work commissioned? The 1915 biography used
Coleridge-Taylor’s letters to Mamie and Andrew Hilyer, and in one
dated 2 May 1903 we see Coleridge-Taylor writing “I have been asked
to write a book on Negro Music by a firm of publishers in the States,
and shall probably undertake it”, and on 14 September 1904 he told
Hilyer “Ditsons, [sic] are the only publishers who have written to
express their thanks and appreciation of my work”.[4]
The
two men finally met, in Boston before the composer sailed back to
England on 13 December 1904.
The
educator’s daughter Portia was a fine pianist, who was to study in
Berlin for two years. She picked C-T’s arrangement of “Sometimes
I Feel like a Motherless Child” at her audition with Professor
Martin Krause. She promised her father to visit Coleridge-Taylor in
England.[5]
The
complete twenty-four Negro melodies seem to have been issued in
Britain, in the Musicians Library series which included Bach, Chopin,
Liszt and Wagner too. This was priced at 7s 6d (£0.37p). A set of
six, including Portia Washington’s choice, was published by
Winthrop Rogers Ltd of London, and sold at 4s (£.20p). Two more
volumes were printed in England. Unlike the full set, Washington’s
introduction was absent.
The
educator had recommended that Coleridge-Taylor contacted baritone
Harry Burleigh for help, and the two men did cooperate during the
1904 tour, and again in 1906. Burleigh came to England and that
friendship flourished. Burleigh had studied, in New York, with Czech
maestro Antonin Dvorak and introduced him to Negro spirituals –
which appear in the master’s ninth symphony From
the New World.
Coleridge-Taylor was an enthusiast for Dvorak’s music.
Coleridge-Taylor’s
relationship with African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar has been
misunderstood (see jeffreygreen.co.uk page 050 Paul Laurence Dunbar
in England).
We
appear to be some way from understanding Coleridge-Taylor’s
friendships with black Americans.
[1]
Major British universities and the British Library have the 14
volumes, as does the London Library. Volumes are on sale on Abe Books
at £15-£20 each. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond Smock (eds), The
Booker T. Washington Papers Vol
8 (1904-1906), pp 112-117.
[2]
The
Times
(London), 24 October 1904, p 2 has Cunard’s advertisement. This
matches Coleridge-Taylor’s letter to Andrew Hilyer of Washington,
DC, dated 22 October 1904 quoted in W. C. Berwick Sayers, Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, Musician. His Life and Letters
London: Cassell, 1915, p 157 [note the 1927 edition has different
type setting and so there are page number differences].
[3]
Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock (eds), The
Booker T. Washington Papers
Vol 7, 1903-1904, pp 527-529.
[5]
Louis R. Harlan, Booker
T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp 117-118.
[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at
AfriClassical.com,
which features a comprehensive Works List and a Bibliography by Prof.
Dominique-René de Lerma,
www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.
We
are collaborating with the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation of the
U.K., www.SCTF.org.uk]
No comments:
Post a Comment